It would be impossible to find a more timely subject matter for an opera libretto than Stuck Elevator, Knoxville Opera’s latest offering that had four performances this past weekend at the Old City Performing Arts Center in a co-production with River & Rail Theatre Company. With music by Byron Au Yong and a libretto by Aaron Jafferis, the one-act opera, first performed in 2013, deals both tragically and poignantly with the immigrant experience that confronts us—immigrant or not—on a daily basis in 2025.
Inspired by a real-life event, the story’s premise was literally ripped from the headlines. In 2005, a deliveryman for a Chinese take-out restaurant in the Bronx was trapped in an elevator for almost four days—81 hours to be exact. The tragedy of his plight was that he was undocumented and feared discovery by authorities. Yong and Jafferis’ opera protagonist is Guang (tenor Allan Palacios Chan), an illegal Chinese immigrant struggling to make money to pay off his trafficker and reunite with his wife and son left behind in China. Guang finds himself trapped in the malfunctioning elevator after making a Chinese food delivery to Tracey Towers in the Bronx, but hesitates summoning assistance via the elevator’s “Help” button out of the fear that police will respond and turn him over to immigration police. Instead, hoping others will discover him, Guang must deal with hunger, thirst, and a deteriorating state of mind that eats away at his resolve with fantasies: his wife Ming (Helen Zhibing Huang) in China, his nephew (André Chiang) that traveled with him to the U.S. in a shipping container but did not survive, his fellow worker Marco (Luis Alejandro Orozco), and his boss (Paul Chwe Minchul An).
Of course, there are issues of conveying a confined space in a work of theatre. Director Keturah Stickann began Guang’s ordeal contemplating that interior and the ever-present “Help” button inside of the scaffolding that serves as the elevator car, but quickly moved him out onto the theatre floor where his tortured thoughts could be visually explored. This offers Chan a broader range of territory on which to paint his character and reveal the physical and mental facets of his dilemma. Stickann has relied on minimal projections (Sophie Smrcka) both for super-titling and to emphasize the status of time passing via a digital clock. One almost expected more in this regard.
As expected, Knoxville Opera has found an admirable cast of singing-actors for the piece. As Guang, Chan is both a marvelous storyteller and portrayer of emotion, not afraid to use a beautifully smooth falsetto where necessary in ballad-like moments. Of course, Orozco, recently heard as an excellent Marcello in the recent KO production of La Boheme, turned his Marco into a vibrant and energetic character, complete with a rich voice. Byron Au Yong’s score is at once accessible and genuine, although it strains against a number of genre confines. Handling that score, Judith Yan conducted the four-member ensemble: Sarah Ringer, violin; Jeanine Wilkinson, cello; Andy Bliss, percussion; and Eileen Downey, keyboard.
Although there is definite mileage in an 81-minute opera marking out the protagonist’s 81-hour ordeal, Stuck Elevator felt a bit too long for its musical and visual intentions. Counting away the minutes, having experienced exhausted realities, fantasies, a rousing aria or two, and some comic relief, one is ecstatic for the elevator finally getting attention and being repaired. Interestingly, Guang simply walks away, unknown and unheralded for his ordeal. Ultimately, this is the fundamental importance of the story, the plight of undocumented immigrants merely seeking a better life and willing to go through hell for it. It’s a story of our times that no uncomfortable theatre seat can ever take away.
